Instead of fighting the inhumane treatment of gays outside of the West, the top human rights issue for LGBT activists is making sure we don’t hurt feelings of people who dispute the definition of being gay.

Social justice movements have long succeeded in correcting legitimate political inequities by uniting under a banner of moral progress. As a result, people are often inclined to trust that these movements, led by champions of progressivism, must be happening in response to systematic and indisputable wrongs with a virtuous end goal in mind.

Enter the newest and loudest cause: transgender activism. Beneath the lavish media praise, the trans movement is hiding a litany of self-annihilating logic and regressive attitudes that merit public conversation. Aside from changing language to suit their subjective identity, the push to deny women sex-segregated protections, and the aggressive support for the transitioning of children, the often overlooked reality to this activism is the movement’s blatantly aggressive homophobia.

They claim to fight for “inclusivity,” but in pushing trans ideology, these activists are, either wittingly or unwittingly, actively erasing lesbians, gays, and any legislation intended to protect them. These supposed defenders of gays and lesbians are endangering the people they claim to fight for by selling out the community they call their own.

We Can’t Protect What We Can’t Define

Legislation and social order rely on objective fact for ensuring protection and enforcement. Trans ideology doesn’t play well with this reality. Consider the terms in question.

“Woman” defined as “adult human female; of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes.”

“Man” defined as “adult human male; of or denoting the sex that produces gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring.”

Trans activism insists these definitions are faulty while failing to provide an alternative. To them, the only relevant “fact” of identity is what is self-determined. The movement fails to coherently define the sexes because its entire political argument relies on suppressing this question in the first place. In reality, their true standard for being a woman or man is simply a strong “feeling” or “conviction” that you are one.

This relies on defining woman synonymously with femininity, and male synonymously with masculinity. Not only is claiming that gender expression makes an essential comment on biology sexist and regressive, but insulting to the gays and lesbians who have challenged, subverted, and influenced the performance of gender for generations.

Gay and lesbian intellectuals once celebrated the radical critique of gender performance. The pride in being gay was located in the community’s rejection of gender norms while continuing to claim biological distinction, because to do otherwise would mean granting certain manners of dress and behavior as inherently male or female.

It’s impossible to say that biological sex is a social construct without conceding to implicit homophobia. Replacing biological sex with self-determined gender erases lesbians and gays, whose sexuality is defined and protected in recognizing the reality of biological sex.

A “homosexual” is defined as: “a person who is sexually attracted to people of their own sex,” with “sex” defined as: “either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and most other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions.” If the biological terms “male” and “female” have no bearing when defining people, what’s the point of defining sexuality?

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are erased from LGBT protections without coherent definitions of biological sex. When anyone can identify as a class of people, the law is not only negated but unnecessary, because by trans logic, we can just identify our way out of any and all oppressive structures.

LGBT ‘Community’ Versus the LGB

Perhaps more shocking than the immediate acceptance of a movement based on nothing more than subjective feeling is the speed at which prominent people and institutions within the LGBT “community” are allowing fellow member’s identities to be undermined in order to spare some trans people’s feelings.

Shannon Keating of Buzzfeed suggests we eliminate the word lesbian altogether, arguing: “Against the increasingly colorful backdrop of gender diversity, a binary label like ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ starts to feel somewhat stale and stodgy. When there are so many genders out there, is it closed-minded — or worse, harmful and exclusionary — if you identify with a label that implies you’re only attracted to one?”

Now homosexuality, and heterosexuality by extension, is harmful because it is exclusionary? The point of defining sexuality is because it’s exclusionary by nature.

Lesbians have undoubtedly gotten the worst of it. There is a disturbing trend of trans women telling lesbians they should sleep with men lest they be labelled as bigots or called “vagina fetishists” (really).

Riley J. Dennis, a YouTuber and self-proclaimed “lesbian trans woman” (a.k.a. heterosexual male), tells lesbians their “genital preferences are discriminatory,” since they only “prefer” vaginas, and “some women have penises.” His self-important preaching is not only absurd, but dangerously influential to an audience of young, impressionable girls and boys who are being coerced into sex out of fear of being “intolerant” and told their sexuality is nothing more than a product of discriminatory “preferences.” His rants sound less like lessons in acceptance and more like some antiquated form of conversion therapy.

LGBT organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD stay silent on this, and even worse, make suggestions like replacing the word vagina with “front-hole.” It’s no surprise that petitions have sprung up, spearheaded by gays and lesbians, demanding that the T be removed from LGBT.

Neither I nor anyone is arguing against the humanity of transgender people, but they don’t get a free pass to redefine the sexuality of gays and lesbians, especially while using the LGB movement and its history to further their own agenda.

Ask No Questions

Dare speak out against the insanity, and so-called “tolerant” liberals are quick to send death threats or yell bigot at the expense of any honest discussion.

A new term has popped up to demonize female opposition: TERF, or “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist.” Like much of the trans narrative, this word resists a clear definition, but frequently it’s used to categorize any woman with common sense. Meka Beresford of Pink News snidely reduces this opposition:

TERF’s claim that trans women are rapists waiting to happen, that they have mental health issues and that fundamentally they are not women. This level of dehumanisation is morally wrong, and all too similar to the persecution that other minorities such as LGB people have faced in the past.

If this sort of discriminatory practice is allowed to exist [in the mainstream] then the society we praise for being accepting will take a turn for the worst.

The argument isn’t that “trans women are rapists waiting to happen” it’s that trans women aren’t women. Saying that they are denies material reality and has dangerous implications worth discussing.

To simultaneously invoke the suffering LGB people have experienced and then dismiss the voices within that community is striking, but trans activists love to conflate their activism with that of the fight for marriage equality. They even go as far as drawing parallels with the civil rights movement.

But tell me: were gays fighting to be recognized as straight to obtain marriage rights? Were black people “identifying” as white in order to be seen as equals? No. They fought for their own laws and protections based on definable terms instead of manipulating terms to deny their own class of people the opportunity to self-actualize. Nevertheless, the trans movement is happy to adopt the struggles of others to justify a cause that simultaneously invalidates those struggles.

Where Do the Oppression Olympics End?

The “who is more oppressed” game is one trans activists have excelled at by arguing a laughable concept: that people born in the “correct body” have “cis privilege.” Assuming that gays and lesbians obtain some sort of privilege for being “cis” is wildly insulting and just plain wrong. Does privilege look like being thrown off roofs to one’s death? Or is privilege found in Chechnya concentration camps, where people are tortured to death for being gay?

Assuming that gays and lesbians obtain some sort of privilege for being ‘cis’ is wildly insulting and just plain wrong.

Instead of fighting the inhumane treatment of gays outside of the west, the top human rights issue for the LGBT community is making sure we don’t hurt feelings of people who dispute the definition of being gay in the first place. Many LGB people who oppose the demands of trans activists frequently wonder who is best served by continuing to advocate, since it’s certainly not gays and lesbians.

In the midst of this hysteria, I ask supporters and trans people alike to face a difficult reality that requires a good hard look at the contradictory and harmful ideas trans activism has built itself upon.

Activism is always noble on paper, but good intentions can be taken advantage of to accomplish harmful ends. To trans activists and those who consider themselves members of the LGBT community: what good is your activism doing? How are you standing up for the rights of LGB persons subject to the death penalty around the world by invalidating the very definition of gay?

There is a way to build a movement behind the rights of the gender dysphoric that recognizes the complexity of the disorder, but the mainstream trans movement only succeeds in endangering, insulting, and erasing the community it has so boldly attached itself to. To that I suggest: Maybe it’s time to rethink your approach.

Taylor Fogarty is a Brooklyn-dwelling freelancer who writes about feminism, politics, and anything else she has an opinion on. She also tweets a lot: @theloudlesbian.